


sunbursts, in stitches

by rensshi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Aged Up Slightly, Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, M/M, Magical Realism, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Non-graphic injuries, arguably perhaps domestic au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 21:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18536215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rensshi/pseuds/rensshi
Summary: Junhui predicts half the news headlines for tomorrow correctly, and does what he can to save lives. Wonwoo breaks out his first aid kit for Junhui, and mostly just tries to figure out if he’s missing a piece of him.





	sunbursts, in stitches

**Author's Note:**

> this is inspired by the lyrics of Traps by Years & Years, which i claimed for this event! i'm always making playlists for my fics so here's [one to listen to as you read](https://open.spotify.com/user/rensshi/playlist/0uOBHbbZmjpeeBs6QRGaxf?si=VqvY8lcLTUWCPkDgCX1DCA)
> 
> edit: me, obviously not american, still amused at how Montauk is literally called the end of the world since it’s at the end of a state and that’s partly how this fic came to be. this started out very different and i gave up on my previous concept that whined angst.. which was [pukes] and just felt a whole lot better when this thing turned softer. 
> 
> additional warnings include: inaccurate descriptions of being a cop and lab technician, geographical inaccuracies of the places mentioned here, im so sorry if anything is off
> 
> thank you to the mods for their enthusiasm and hard work for this event! <3

People at church are saying the recent string of hailstorms in New York City signaled the end of the world. The beginning of it was in spring, 2020, when Wonwoo was shivery from a cold and doubled back for his forgotten phone back home, and Tylenol. The next hailstorm, months later at the end of a volatile summer season, passes over much quicker, with smaller icicles raining down. Wonwoo remembers to close the window this time, so he doesn’t have to buy new pots for his plants. There’s still a water stain on the floor under his apartment window from where the ice had melted, and soiled water from the fallen house plants had seeped into the lining. A year later, and Wonwoo’s lost count of how many have passed.

So Jeonghan predictably thinks what the people say at church about the hailstorms is a load of bullshit, given that the world would meet its demise even without it. Prayers will _not_ reverse climate change, or whatever. Meanwhile, Joshua remains unperturbed while Wonwoo and him look at the menus in a Vietnamese restaurant.

It’s quieter than usual since it’s past eight in the evening. The streets through the glass panes are layers of cold greys and blues as people walk past. Wonwoo fiddles with his menu, knowing that he’ll order his usual but flips through the pages aimlessly anyway.

“Isn’t Junhui back already?” Jeonghan starts, and Joshua looks up slowly, blinks at Wonwoo like it’s taking him some effort to focus in his hungry state.

“Yeah. He’s alright, his family too,” Wonwoo affirms, and he starts to shake one leg under the table. Junhui is still recovering from jetlag. Tomorrow, Wonwoo and him would be headed east.

“What’s there to do at Montauk?” Joshua asks. “I kind of like how people call that place the end of the world. Junhui can take his conspiracy theories there with you.”

“Do you wanna hear about them?” Wonwoo asks, a smirk growing on his face.

“No thanks,” Jeonghan says flatly. His face smooths over, and then creases into the expression where he’s about to say something nice, brotherly but will ring a warning. “Just take care, alright?” Jeonghan says, before knocking back his bottle of coke.

 

 

 

It’s below ten degrees celsius at the beach in Montauk. When Wonwoo’s teeth have finally stopped chattering, he still decides to forego saying for the millionth time that Junhui is crazy. He keeps his hands stuck inside his coat pockets sitting hunched atop the back of Junhui’s car. The sunshine feels weak but the pearly sky gleams either way over the towering and lonely lighthouse.

“How did you see it?” Wonwoo asks after he hears the car door slam shut gently, and Junhui leans next to him against the trunk.

“I drew words onto the sand. And I looked up, saw you coming to the shoreline,” Junhui says, glancing at Wonwoo. “You weren’t wearing this coat, though.”

“When are you leaving again?” Wonwoo asks instead, shifting against Junhui’s warm weight leaning against his leg.

“By the end of June,” he replies softly, rubbing his nose. “There’s another case that’s connected, and Seungcheol’s sending me to one of the precincts in L.A. for a while to help out on this one.”

The silence stretches. He feels it crawling over Junhui’s shoulders, sink into his spine and Wonwoo should be used to it, but he’s not anymore.

“I’ll come back for your birthday, though,” Junhui says.

“Mm. You fucking better.”

“Would never miss your birthday,” Junhui simpers, and Wonwoo just glares.

Their shoes are left on the wooden steps leading to the sand and their jeans rolled up to the calves because Junhui thinks there’s no point going to the beach if you can’t feel the sand. Like if he buries his feet deeper into the wet slush of sand while the waves lap around his ankles, what they do will be imprinted on the earth, if only temporarily.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Junhui notes, quietly enough that Wonwoo doubts whether or not it was meant to be heard.

He responds anyway. “What thing?”

Junhui shakes his head while he walks back to dry sand, a hand rubbing his left side. Wonwoo’s eyes track the movement— like muscle memory. There’s a soft smile curving its way up on Junhui’s lips. “Planting seeds in your head for you to wheedle over?” He tries. “Trying to figure everything out by yourself.”

Wonwoo sits down next to him. There’s a brief second where Junhui’s gaze lingers on Wonwoo’s hands, around his face, and he can’t tell if it looks like longing or something closer to missing. Or both—often times they don’t come exclusive from each other.

“So are you,” Wonwoo shoots back. “ _You’re_ doing that thing again too.” Junhui’s expression changes into embarrassment before he catches Wonwoo smiling.

They consider going to the lighthouse for a moment, but stay put near the car.

"A lighthouse used to be one of the wonders of the world, before it collapsed," Junhui tells him, dropping the tiny shells he's collected into an empty water bottle in his car. "Its replica in Shenzhen is already really getting that busted worn out look. Not that it looks bad."

Wonwoo remembers Junhui mentioning once, about the theme park in his home city back in China that held near-perfect structures of the seven wonders of the world. He doesn't even want to see the actual Great Pyramid, but he turns to Junhui and tells him, "I should come with you next time for a holiday. You know, places to go, sites to see, even if they're not the real things."

Junhui's teeth flashes, his gums showing as he pokes his head through one of the windows over Wonwoo sprawled awkwardly across the backseat. "There are a million other things to do in Shenzhen. But of course we could go."

 

 

 

In Wonwoo’s mind’s eye, there are flowers and greenery, sunbursts fast growing in the pots by his windows.

His parents used to have a garden at the back of their home in South Korea, that Wonwoo would watch his mother tend to in between running around on the grass. He was only four then.

When he moved to New York with his family at the age of six, all they have is flowers bought from the florist. He let the soil for the orchids in his mother’s vase dry out until they withered, and she didn’t get angry but Wonwoo felt bad either way.

The sunburst and Devil’s ivy by his window in his apartment now, were given by Junhui. They’re healthy, all the right colors.

In Wonwoo’s bad dreams, the plants die. There are gunshots in the background, stitches tear open along a gentle dip lining a tan torso, and flower petals spill out. There's no blood in his dreams but he wakes up in a cold sweat.

 

 

 

It’s the iron perseverance that’s made Junhui who he is now, and it lands him into the following: shallow cuts and scrapes from a scuffle, or the occasional sprain in a joint aside from the grinding paperwork at the precinct. Official business where there are paramedics nearby their police units and one of his colleagues named Vernon usually got the worst of it. The low-level crooks and drug peddlers they track down are just so _stupid_ sometimes.

If he’s being completely honest, it pisses Wonwoo off on occasion in some way that Junhui does his job as a cop well. _Too well_ , Junhui had joked before he bit down on the corner of one of Wonwoo’s yellow throw pillows anxiously while Wonwoo himself dabbed cleaning antiseptic over the fresh cut on his left cheek.

“You didn’t have to do all that again,” Junhui said solemnly, gingerly pressing the bandaid on his face.

“Of course not.”

All Junhui did in response to that was scowl at him with a meek, “Thanks though.”

“You’re welcome.”

If not for Junhui, he’d have lost a limb, or ended up dead on New Year’s Eve last week; there was an accident in the middle of Brooklyn, a public bus crashing into a large truck that ran a red in broad daylight. Wonwoo had taken the subway because _not the bus today_ , Junhui had adamantly said. Wonwoo thought he’d gotten pre-motion sickness or something by how green Junhui had looked, so Wonwoo complied. The article on New Year’s the next day covered 8 deaths, 21 injured from the crash. He can tell Wonwoo what the New York Times’ headlines were the next day. Half the time, he’s right about the headlines. On occasion, he’d know if a missing person was still alive.

“Does Seungcheol really not know? He’s called you boy wonder once but he’s sergeant. Thought you guys needed trust and all that,” Wonwoo says, scooping some of the Ben & Jerry’s that he’s pulled from Junhui’s fridge into a bowl for himself.

“I joked that I was ‘gifted’,” Junhui replies, quoting the word with his fingers. “I just let them believe that I’m just _really_ lucky with my hunches.”

“Doesn’t it scare you? Being able to know things before they happen?” Wonwoo asks.

“Yeah. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of it,” Junhui replies, after a moment’s hesitation.

“So can you, like, predict the end of the world?” Wonwoo asks, licking the cookie butter ice cream off his spoon.

Junhui cringes like this question brings him physical pain, and Wonwoo is actually scared for a second. But then he groans, and lays his head against Wonwoo’s thigh. Junhui’s legs stretch past the arm of the couch.

“Nope. I don’t think it works that way,” Junhui mumbles.

“The hell do you mean it doesn’t work that way?” Wonwoo frowns, bouncing his leg so Junhui’s head bounces once too. Seeing into the future meant exactly that, except where you can’t see past a brick wall anymore. Junhui has ran into this so-called brick wall enough times that he’s never been able to call it a blessing or a curse.

Wonwoo is glad; it makes Junhui human. There’s always been two versions of Junhui in his head:

There’s the one that he knows best, the one he can reach out to right there to physically poke at when Junhui is being indecisive about which errand to do first. The one that’s real, despite it being the version that appears sometimes in Wonwoo’s dreams. This Junhui listens to what Wonwoo will have to say, and let him wring out his words if the need for them to hang in the air is greater than an actual response.

The other version of Junhui almost feels untouchable. On the rare occasions when Junhui has rougher days, Wonwoo tries to define this version of him. Each day at work, he’s looking at bits of people under a microscope and running analyses. It’s completely different to be feeling Junhui’s skin and wrist pulse thrum beneath his palms, the smell of disinfectant filling the space, and wonder if something’s missing. He hands Junhui the bottle of antiseptic, watches him pour it into cotton at his kitchen counter. It’s almost like not catching a late night train you should have gotten on to get home. Wonwoo hasn’t voiced this thought out at all, even though he probably should.

Wonwoo watches Junhui stretch his arms over his head, and smiles back when Junhui beams at him with the city skyline below them at the top of the Rockefeller Center at night. Wonwoo realizes then, that in the grand scheme of things, they were all so small. Tiny and living in a web of possibilities that criss-crossed over their lives.

 

 

 

It mildly amuses Jeonghan, and Junhui too to some extent, that the news headline today reads: _Moose vanish in Vermont_ , _and take a trip to the West Coast._ Joshua, who came from L.A. years before he met Wonwoo, Jeonghan and the others, is extremely fascinated, a little alarmed. Another headline reads: _Missing girl reappears again claiming to have seen another world_ . On Wednesday, it’s not covered in the papers, but this woman in Japan with Alzheimer’s who wakes up cured one day, goes viral online. _A blessing or a curse?_ She cries every time she remembers what she couldn’t before.

Wonwoo didn’t believe in magic. But there are possibilities.

“I don’t think the hailstorms are natural,” Junhui says one day, listening to the news on the radio in Wonwoo’s apartment.

“Yeah? They were natural before we got hit with the twentieth one this year,” Wonwoo says distractedly from the floor. He’s trying to screw on the legs of a new coffee table. “Tell me what you think it is that caused them,” he says, just to fill the empty spaces in his ribcage with Junhui’s voice. Instead, Junhui just slides off the armchair by the window, crawls over to sit in front of Wonwoo. Filling the space like this is good too, Wonwoo supposes even though he narrows his eyes at Junhui who grins at him.

“Maybe religious people have a point. Someone’s furious and they made it rain ice over the city,” Junhui ponders out loud.

“You say ‘someone’, not God.”

“Yeah, I’d rather just say ‘someone’. Do you want me to help?” Junhui asks, reaching out towards the table. Wonwoo hits his elbow when he makes to grab the screwdriver and the pain paralyzes him for a few seconds. He throws a weak punch at Junhui’s arm when he laughs at Wonwoo.

Tonight, Junhui is off work. but it’s the dream he had the previous night that sends him outside, taking his police badge with him. Wonwoo keeps his phone close by and the radio on. As expected, there’s a sudden fire along Tompkins. No deaths, even if arson was on the table tonight. Wonwoo pulls out a drawer and contemplates taking out the first aid kit already.

Junhui comes back to Wonwoo smelling like sweat, soot and there are no burns, but his right hand is wrapped in a fresh bandage.

“Who’s laughing now?” Wonwoo asks but his voice comes out gentle. It always does, and his hands this time, are steady when they’re pressing gently into the gauze to check the work done there, and his fingers graze past the skin.

“Stop,” Junhui mutters, shivering a little. He never pulls away though.

Wonwoo breathes easier with Junhui’s warmth pressed against him. The old familiar ache—a lot like missing and only a little like longing—flares up this time for Wonwoo. He tries to think that he’s being a good friend, letting Junhui sleep in his bed instead of the couch when he visits but that does nothing to relieve the ache.

At the age of fourteen, he said he didn’t believe in magic. But he keeps watering the plants given by Junhui anyway on his window sill. They just start looking parched and dull when Junhui gets hurt.

“I know I’m weird, but I swear, it isn’t me,” Junhui declares, putting up both hands in front of him in defense. “They’re succulents! You could leave for a whole week trying to get a tan in Florida, and they’d still be fine.”

“The sun chewed me up and spat me back out with the worst sunburn of my life the last time I went to Florida. But you’re right—they were still upright, and straight as Seungcheol could ever be when I last came back from Korea,” says Wonwoo, running a hand over his face. They’re outside a bar after happy hour on the street, neither of them buzzed enough from the beer they’d been nursing for a while after their friends have left.

“You ever think maybe it’s just you?”

“What.”

Wonwoo blinks at the way Junhui is frowning slightly at him in thought.

“They’re like—your pets that sense when you’re sad,” Junhui explains like it’s the most obvious thing.

“Haha funny.”

“Feed them good, take them out for more sunshine, and play music for them—they’ll grow monstrous,” Junhui says, wiggling his fingers like he’s casting a spell.

His mouth curls upwards when Wonwoo throws back his head and laughs, “Leave them alone.”

 

 

 

When something breaks, there’s like a 30% chance that Wonwoo will injure himself trying to put things back together with his butter fingers. The fact that Wonwoo works in the forensics lab together with people like Mingyu, who drops pens everyday and knocks over Jeonghan’s stolen stack of Post-It’s, has always been a funny irony to Junhui.

But Junhui finds a lot of things funny, except the recent elections, and when he’s on a case with Minghao, or Seungcheol, across the country up north. He’d complain to Wonwoo on the phone about the cold. Wonwoo will say something like _glad it isn’t me_ and chuckle at how Junhui mumbles everything after, teeth chattering if he’s not calling Wonwoo from indoors. He’s only had to help investigate out of town twice in the years that Wonwoo has known him. Each time, he brought back with him a new winter jacket that he leaves behind again for Wonwoo to borrow.

Junhui doesn’t laugh either when he comes in to Wonwoo’s apartment smelling like ointment and rust from the dried trickle of red under his sleeve.

“Why are you in forensics and not the first aid team? You could be a paramedic. I could just ask for you right there,” Junhui teases but it’s weak, fully aware that it could sound like flirting. “Or not,” he amends.

“It’d be a paramount waste of my college degree,” Wonwoo says. “Also, for a cop, you’re not very smart,” he mutters, wringing a towel from a basin and wiping with more pressure than usual against Junhui’s arm so he keeps his mouth shut.

Wonwoo has his biochemistry diploma stashed on a shelf somewhere. He never went to med school, but he’d been trained in extensive first aid and emergency ever since he was twelve; his parents were doctors, so that helped. Wonwoo doesn’t think he’s that brave, but when Junhui does what he does, maybe he feels braver.

It’s quiet for a while; Wonwoo works at cleaning the shallow wound underneath the thin bandage that Junhui had obviously plastered himself onto his knee. Minghao had ended up with a cut to his left cheekbone. Wonwoo can already imagine what Seungcheol would say.

Junhui looks so tired, his eyes almost unblinking as they stare at a spot over Wonwoo’s shoulder. He’s teetering between the two versions of himself that Wonwoo’s thought of. “My head feels so heavy,” he finally announces, and shifts in his place on the armchair, keeping his leg still in Wonwoo’s grip.

“The smell of the antiseptic’s finally gotten to you,” Wonwoo replies and Junhui opens his mouth in indignance to quip back a retort, but closes his mouth again when Wonwoo squeezes his shoulder gently to reassure him, that he’s still here.

 

 

 

By an unfortunate turn of events, a bullet snags Junhui’s gut one night, shot by a robber in a group of three who’d been armed. Only one of them gets caught.

“Have you tried the coffee here?” Jeonghan asks, settling in beside Wonwoo on the chairs at the hospital. A nurse walks swiftly past, deftly stepping over Jeonghan’s outstretched legs before he tucks his feet under the chair.

“Too watery. Doesn’t keep me awake.”

“No shit, it’s almost 1 AM on a Monday night.”

Wonwoo grunts and closes his eyes before Joshua can tell them both to shut up when he comes back from getting said shitty coffee at one of the hospital’s vending machines. Jeonghan and Joshua didn’t have to stay this long, but Wonwoo doesn’t feel like telling either of them that.

Neither does Vernon, Junhui’s partner tonight, who’d only been on the job five months after the academy. Vernon has paced holes into the floor earlier, so Wonwoo doesn’t have to. His whole body is aware of every ache he has from being tense and on edge for a couple of hours. The dread and fear wrings itself tight until it becomes something close to dissociation, a thick bubble cushioning his head.

“Hey, it’ll be okay,” Jeonghan says quietly, touching Wonwoo’s shoulder.

The plants in his mind’s eye are wilting. He scrunches his eyes shut tighter. Jeonghan lays a hand on his forearm.

Leave it to Junhui to get a bullet lodged in his left side without it doing critical damage to his organs. The concept of some sort of forever always felt ripe around the edges with Junhui.

“I probably look as bad as I feel,” Junhui says when Wonwoo is with him at the hospital while he recovers. There’s no blood on the sheets or his hospital gown and pants like Wonwoo seems to picture in his head. His eyes are lined with shadows, and his hair dull and limp under the white light.

“You must feel terrible then,” Wonwoo notes, grins at Junhui’s bemused expression. He shirks out some clothes from a duffel bag he’s brought over from Junhui’s apartment, and lays them out on the bedside. It’s still hard not to look at the bandages on Junhui’s left side of his stomach, just dangerously shy of being near his hip bone, while he carefully helps Junhui pull on a new clean t-shirt over his head. The fabric falls like a sheet over his stomach and the gauze there, and like a magic trick he almost looks as good as new.

Junhui takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly, like he’s testing the way his chest and ribs expand and deflate.

“Hey Wonwoo,” Junhui starts. “You make a good keeper.”

“I’m your best friend, not your nurse,” Wonwoo replies, licking his chapped lips.

Junhui’s shoulders droop just a fraction of an inch, and he quietly says, “Don’t want a nurse.”

“Don’t let her hear that.” Wonwoo thinks what Junhui said was only half-true; the nurse here who takes care of Junhui was gentle, pretty, considerably lifted his mood when it was still too painful for him to really move the first couple of days.

“I’d rather have you around,” Junhui says instead without so much of a chuckle this time.

Something sticks in his throat before Wonwoo responds with a quick, “Still, don’t let her hear you say that.”

It’s a sunny day outside for the middle of fall. Through the hospital blinds, the strips of light fall over the white floors and light green walls. They spill over Junhui’s hand feeling the stitches on his side.

The silence in Wonwoo’s head drills into white noise and out again before he quietly asks “You saw this coming, didn’t you?”

Junhui tears his eyes away. He was always never really good at lying, at least not to Wonwoo. “No, I didn’t. Hospital beds, sure, but not this hospital.” Junhui’s eyes flicker around the room. His chest rises and falls in an irregular rhythm.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Wonwoo says first, like Junhui was planning on it.

Some things are better kept to themselves and there are moments where Junhui tells him a lot of things, and a whole lot of nothing at once.

 

 

 

They first met on a weird night, at Seungcheol’s informal engagement party. A power outage during a storm blacks out half the neighborhood during the celebration. Seungcheol, nervously reminds the guests not to knock over a candle and burn the place down.

One of Seungcheol’s colleagues, an officer who was gunning to be a police detective in the months to come, had helped Wonwoo and Jeonghan stuff Seungcheol’s gaming consoles in the freezer while Joshua snickered over them and stood watch by the kitchen door. The officer, Junhui, had helped make Wonwoo forget about the weird claustrophobic heaviness clinging to his skin that he gets when he’s in a dark place for too long. Wonwoo used to be deathly terrified of the darkness as a kid.

“Told you you’d like him,” Jeonghan says to Wonwoo after half of the guests have gone home drunk and singing, and the other half hover over what photographs, high school softball trophies, paintings and life mementos could now be seen in the dim flicker of the candles.

“Who?” Even though Wonwoo is mostly all sobered up, he can never be too sure.

“Jun. Junhui.” Jeonghan nods in the direction of the kitchen, where Junhui’s figure can be seen in the doorway. It was so dark and Wonwoo can’t really see so he settles on squinting at Jeonghan instead. His hair had gotten longer again, bangs swept aside and distracting to other people, the way he was in college. “Figured you’d hear out each other’s conspiracy theories.”

Wonwoo frowns. “I didn’t hear any of his theories,” he says, and his tone comes out disappointed even though it’s meant to be skeptical. Jeonghan just smirks, fastens Wonwoo to his side with an arm on his shoulder and starts dragging him towards the kitchen.

Jeonghan always had the uncanny ability to maneuver his way through forming people’s interpersonal relationships. It’s either just charm, an exceedingly high EQ, or telepathy. Wonwoo thought about X-Men and hopes that it isn’t a superpower level of empathy. So he maneuvers his way into somehow getting Wonwoo to make one more new friend. It’s dark but Junhui’s sharp eyes aren’t as intimidating anymore when he starts speaking. Wonwoo’s laughing in stitches and it’s a good kind of hurt in his stomach that he hasn’t felt in a while.

That was then. And that hasn’t really changed over the couple of years. The significant difference now is that Wonwoo feels stitches lining his heart and chest, even though he’s sure nothing is broken.

“Do you believe in God?” Wonwoo asks. They’re in Junhui’s car after having gone to a dessert bar. Wonwoo was feeling out of it, his mind still flashing images of grainy autopsies. Work in the labs had been getting to him lately with the strange cases they’ve had.

Junhui keeps his eyes ahead, but his eyebrows pinch together ever so slightly. He moves a hand from the steering wheel to his knee. Curls it into a loose fist. He can never seem to keep his fingers still.

Junhui says something beneath the the rush of cold wind beating against Wonwoo’s hair through the window rolled down. He leans away from the open window, straightens himself up so he can listen properly.

“I do, but not enough,” Junhui says again, laughing a little and shaking his head.

“Me neither,” Wonwoo says, not really knowing where this conversation is going but not really minding either.

“I think I believe in people more,” Junhui admits.

Wonwoo lets this sink in, and realizes how this answer is so wholly _Junhui_ that he smiles.

When they finally reach Wonwoo’s apartment, Wonwoo’s fingers fumble over the seatbelt as they’re talking. He unbuckles himself at the same time Junhui has already leaned toward him with a hand outstretched over his torso aimed at helping him.

“Oh,” Junhui says, eyes wide. Then his hand shoots back to clutch at the side of his own waist, and he hisses a soft “Fuck, ouch.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Wonwoo says, batting at Junhui’s hand over the covered bandages there. The fondness is apparent in his tone and it hangs in the air. Junhui, in turn, responds to it by grasping Wonwoo’s fingers and gently pulling, until they’re so close that Wonwoo lets it happen.

He lets Junhui press his lips against his own, opens his mouth for him and kisses back. It shouldn’t even come as a surprise. He imagines the versions of Junhui in his head to sometimes mirror the ache Wonwoo carries. But then, he hasn’t really thought about what would happen, if one of these versions actually loves him back. The kiss though, feels like Wonwoo’s finally jumped on that late night train. It’s a fast track speeding along, the insistence of Junhui’s lips and a soft sigh, letting Wonwoo taste with his heart in his mouth.

Wonwoo just pushes forward, harder with his tongue running along teeth, until Junhui doesn’t have to strain his waist at an uncomfortable angle. By the time he pulls away, Junhui’s lips are shiny and darker, the bow of his mouth even more prominent when half his face is in shadow.

Junhui’s teeth graze over his own bottom lip, eyes darting back to Wonwoo’s mouth before the words tumble out, “Are you scared of the future?”

Wonwoo lets his body sag back against the seat. He waits until he isn’t as breathless anymore, and answers “No, I’m not.”

Junhui drops his gaze, smiles a thin wobbly smile, the one that doesn’t make his cheeks fuller, his eyes brighter. Wonwoo feels his own brows crease at that. “That’s good,” Junhui says. “Because I am.”

 

 

 

The hospital that Junhui sees in his dreams is all the way in China, back in his hometown. His grandfather dies of a stroke and Wonwoo doesn’t hear from Junhui in a week after he’s replied to Wonwoo’s condolence text.

When he finally gets a hold of Junhui, he’s sitting on the rug in front of his couch with clothes spilling out of an open suitcase when Wonwoo steps through Junhui’s front door on a stormy Saturday night.

“I ran out of bubble wrap,” Junhui says, wrapping a tiny salt lamp in a windbreaker jacket. “My grandmother wanted this because it looks pretty, more than anything,” he adds when he notices Wonwoo staring at the mini salt lamp, coral crystals encased in glass, a bowl of gems Junhui is holding in his hand.

He takes a deep breath, looks up at Wonwoo. “We need to talk, about—” he waves his hand, swallowing.

“Now?” Wonwoo asks, sitting on the couch anyway. His heartbeat picks up speed at the same time thunder crashes and the window rattles angrily from the wind. Wonwoo has to remind himself that he’s 26, and his heart shouldn’t jump at thunderstorms. But then, he’s _only_ 26, and there are a lot of things he can’t understand. The power goes out and Junhui becomes an outline lit up when lightning flashes outside.

Junhui lights the scented candle that Mingyu had gifted all of them each on Christmas last year. It should have been a relief but the glow on Junhui’s face does nothing to alleviate the nervous crawl up Wonwoo’s spine.

“Don’t say it,” Wonwoo warns, when Junhui joins him on the couch.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say,” he murmurs beside Wonwoo.

“Don’t say that we shouldn’t,” Wonwoo continues anyway. The rain is relentless outside, and that’s when there’s a light tapping on the window; icicles like pebbles beating against the glass.

“I was thinking about that,” Junhui admits. His fingers skim around Wonwoo’s hand, the hard pulse on his wrist, up to his elbow and Wonwoo swallows down the shiver the touch brings. “But then, I figured you’d see why not. I’ve been shot but it’s just—almost funny how, well I should probably be braver than this,” he says, keeping his eyes on his hand.

The stitches in Wonwoo’s chest feel taut again. Wonwoo sighs. “It’s the overthinking. And that’s _my_ favorite hobby.”

Junhui scoffs. “Guess it rubbed off on me,” he mutters. “A couple of months ago, I dreamed about being on a beach somewhere with you. With a lighthouse,” he continues. “I think it was in Montauk, the end of the world.”

“So we’re going to the end of the world?” Wonwoo asks, the words rolling off strange on his tongue but the right words nonetheless, judging from how Junhui’s eyes seem to light up. In the far-off distance, trains and cars stop, people will take shelter. In another part of the state, someone will make the headlines again claiming to have found something or someone missing.

“Why not? Do we need a reason?” Junhui says, his eyes glinting under the glow of lightning muted through the curtains. The stitches underneath Junhui’s shirt can barely be felt, a life still living and crossed over with Wonwoo’s. With Junhui smiling like that, Wonwoo feels like a teenager again, sitting there in the dark, talking about possibilities, grabbing on to a friend’s hand to jump on trains. The ice rhythmically tapping against the window outside, is another reminder, of things he might not ever understand.

Wonwoo hasn’t realized until now how their thighs are pressed against each other. The side of his bony knees knock against Junhui’s leg. “If you ever find out, don’t tell me yet how the world ends, okay?” Wonwoo says, smiles when he feels Junhui’s hand in his.

 

 

 

 

At Montauk, it’s a little warmer now that the sun hangs straight overhead them. There’s the lighthouse, sky and the sea, and it reminds Wonwoo of the coastal town where he was born in South Korea.

Wonwoo's got his legs sticking out the open car window, next to Junhui looking at him from the outside. Again, Wonwoo can’t tell if the look in his eyes is more longing or something closer to missing. They aren’t mutually exclusive. So he retracts his legs, sits up. Buries his hand in Junhui’s hair, tilts his head so he can kiss him. Wonwoo doesn’t need versions of Junhui in his head to gauge the sureness of how he kisses back.

“Did you predict this?” Wonwoo asks him.

“Really? Does it matter?” Junhui says back at him, fingers curling behind Wonwoo’s neck, tracing paths. Wonwoo closes his eyes again, feels Junhui smile against his mouth.

It really doesn’t matter.

So Wonwoo’s thought about it: He’s thought about the world ending and it not mattering when. He’s thought about a garden, plants sprouting tall and lush, and how it would have been unthinkable to not watch love grow before the world ends.

 

 

 

 _"If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life." -_ __Pablo Neruda_ _

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> no jun never saw it coming. anyway thanks for reading! <3
> 
> i'm on a twitter and curiouscat @fractalkiss


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